Annotated 46-22
FB: Troll society’s Instagram top nine is kind of depressing.
We never really have time to get into this, but watching this fight has got to be deeply weird for Byron, Syr’Nj, and Frigg. I mean, for one thing, their lives may be on the line if Penk loses. For another, this arena is the site of their own deaths, and skipping over the technicalities, Harky largely caused those deaths.
Byron met Harky in combat after that (as did Syr’Nj briefly, though I doubt she remembers it), and any lingering trauma he has from Harky is probably eclipsed by other traumas he’s risen above (hell, he’s even died again since then). Syr’Nj has been feeling guilty about her own war-inspired prejudices, so she probably sees paying respects to Harky as a growth opportunity, assuming Penk wins. And Frigg is by now mature enough to let some old grudges go when geopolitics depend on it…Syr’Nj has influenced her that much at least.
But even so.
Are Byron and the others actually present in the audience? I missed that.
We’ll see them in the next few pages.
I just assumed everyone’s high on the sense of fatalism they got from talking to Weo that they’re not even concerned. They know Penk’s going to win, so whatever. Because yeah, if they have any doubts at all about their odds, then the whole plan of teleporting directly to the airship seems crazy. They could very easily just wait a couple days and then show up at Souff Koral after Penk’s got things in hand, as the invited guests of the new warchief.
But, yunno, drama.
It was mentioned a few times in the past the plot was sped up cut out some longer arcs. Guess the big reveal was meant more as a ticking clock to move things along rather than a heavenly mandate things are going to go there’s way. The need the Alliance to happen and can’t wait for cooler heads to prevail. I can totally see a another act building this up more, the airship bit was (intentionally) silly but it doesn’t really break from the stories original pacing leading up to this.
Sorry for the typos, on my phone and I don’t always catch auto correct butchering my sentences for not using the proper punctuation just before posting.
“Drama” is the key word here. Have you ever read a drama? You know ahead of time that the hero will die, but you read it anyway, and you get invested in them, and then you’re disappointed in the end, but you knew it was coming.
The same goes for most other fiction. In most cases you more or less know what will happen at the end (or you could if you care to know) but you still read the whole book or watch the movie, and it affects you.
Some study a few years ago found that “spoiling” a movie or a book ending barely influences whether people like it. It’s a bit like going on one of those freaky glass platforms that people like to put on top of cliffs in national parks these days (or a haunted house, or watch a good horror movie…): You know you’re safe but it’s still pretty scary.
So I’m pretty sure that while Penk probably did get some confidence that he would win, I can’t imagine him and the others being particularly relaxed right now. That’s on top of the fact that they don’t have the whole winter elf vision. They only know what they learned from the few sentences Weo told them (which still leave some room for interpretation…)
The ONLY way to catch all your typos is to send your post – then they’re painfully obvious
That’s also the way to realize you’re posting to the main thread, instead of replying to SteelRaven
This is a work of art.
Schröedinger’s post : Simultaneously immaculate and a trainwrek, until you press send.
Then it’s a trainwreck.